Why are the Cubs risking going to arbitration with Kyle Tucker?

This is a puzzling way to begin a relationship with your best player

It’s the arbitration deadline day and the Cubs managed to come to terms with pitchers Justin Steele and Nate Pearson. Curiously, however, they were unable to come to terms with one of the newest and most talented members of the team, Kyle Tucker.

Early this evening we learned that the Cubs and Kyle Tucker were about $2.5 million apart in their numbers and could be heading for arbitration from Jesse Rogers of ESPN:

Now, players and teams don’t match up on numbers and that begins a process of exchanging numbers and coming to terms on a deal. The final stage of that process is an arbitration hearing where both the player and the team make their cases and an arbiter determines the outcome. At any point between now and that hearing the two sides could agree to either set of terms, or a compromise and avoid arbitration.

To be clear, this is not the first time the Cubs have failed to avoid arbitration with a player. Ian Happ went to arbitration hearings with the Cubs during the 2021 offseason and won his case. He later signed an extension with the team and we all know he’s been a stalwart in left field ever since. Fans could point to that example and shrug this business between Tucker and the Cubs off as merely a small bump in the road with the Cubs newest star player.

That arbitration hearing with Happ was a rarity for the Cubs, as the above-linked MLB.com piece points out:

Prior to Happ’s case, the Cubs’ only arbitration hearing during the Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer front office era (going back to 2012) came in 2018. That year, Chicago came out on top in a hearing with pitcher Justin Grimm, who was then released in March of that Spring Training.

There have been just two other arbitration hearings for the Cubs beyond Happ and Grimm over nearly three decades. Chicago won its case against infielder Ryan Theriot in 2010 and also won a case with first baseman Mark Grace in 1993.

Honestly, I can understand why the Cubs would tend to avoid arbitration hearings, because the thing about them is teams basically have to go in and explain to a player why, exactly, they don’t believe the player is worth the extra money they believe they are owed. That isn’t exactly a pleasant experience, as former Brewers ace Corbin Burnes discussed when he lost his arbitration hearing with Milwaukee over about $700,000 prior to the 2023 season:

“You kind of find out your true value,” Burnes said. “You work hard for seven years in the organization and five years with the big league team, and you get in there and basically they value you much different than what you thought you’d contributed to the organization. Obviously, it’s tough to hear, tough to take, but they’re trying to do what they can to win a hearing.

“I think there were other ways that they could have gone about it and probably been a little more respectful with the way they went about it. At the end of day, here we are. They won it. But when it came down to winning or losing the hearing, it was more than that for me.”

The Brewers dealt Burnes to the Baltimore Orioles with one year left on his contract, and while they might have done that regardless of arbitration, I can’t imagine the hearing where they told him everything he wasn’t doing encouraged extension talks.

And herein lies the rub for the Cubs, who traded a first round draft pick in Cam Smith along with multiple years of control of Isaac Paredes and Hayden Wesneski for just one year of Kyle Tucker earlier this winter. We already know the Cubs value Tucker’s talents quite a bit based on what they gave up to get him on the team. I’ve also written a few times that that is a steep package to give up for a guy if you don’t believe you have a chance at extending him to a long-term deal.

So how is it possibly a good idea to begin the relationship with a hearing looming where the Cubs will be on the hook to explain all of the reasons they believe Kyle Tucker is worth $2.5 million a year less than he thinks he should earn in 2025? Why would you trade a haul for a potential franchise guy to take him to a hearing telling him what he isn’t worth before he’s played a single game for your team? And how, exactly, do you start long term extension talks after that? It really seems like a curious way to kick things off with a guy Jed Hoyer should be hoping to sign to the largest extension in franchise history by orders of magnitude.

So the question for Cubs fans tonight, whether you’re joining us late at night or early in the morning is: Why are the Cubs going to arbitration with Kyle Tucker?